The invention is in the field of substrate handling and deals with the handling of multi-board panels containing an array of printed circuit boards (hereafter referred to as boards) by machinery which is adapted to depanel or liberate each board from the panel. Some of the panels have had little or no routing around the peripheries of the individual boards prior to handling by such a machine. Others of the panels have been routed to an extent that only small tabs or webs of the paneling material remain to hold the boards in the panel with sufficient rigidity that they remain attached during automated population of the boards with electrical components. The latter type of panel generally is referred to in the industry involved as a slotted and webbed (or tabbed) array.
More particularly, the invention deals with so-called in-line handling of the multi-board panels for the purpose of depaneling or liberating boards therefrom. Flexible in-line depaneling has been an illusive technology because of the difficulty in automatically handling the individual boards after depanelization. Unlike the multi-board panel, the individual boards present widely varying sizes and shapes which generally are not designed with automatic handling of the separated boards in mind.
As a result, previous methods and apparatus for in-line depaneling have involved loss of registration between the machine and the individual board upon liberation of the board from the panel. With this prior art, a "re-registration" step is required, either by human intervention or by another machine operation, in order to be able to operate on the board with the precise control required by some processes that may need to be performed on it. Such re-registration of the individual boards introduces another level of difficulty and a resulting loss of time into the board handling process, especially when the boards vary in size and/or shape.
The invention avoids this problem by gripping each board prior to depaneling being performed and in a manner to provide and/or maintain registration between the board and machine for liberation of the board from the panel and during transfer of the liberated board from the routing station to a subsequent station.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to obtain and/or retain registered control of individual boards for, during, and after processing of a multi-board panel.
Additionally, it is an object of the invention to physically support each individual board as it is liberated from a panel and to retain registration between the machine and each board during a depaneling process.
Further, it is an object of the invention to retain registration between the machine and each board during support and transfer thereof away from a depaneling station to a subsequent station.
These and other objects will become apparent from the following disclosure.